Livin’ Large: A student on high school students with obesity problems in Manila

Abstract

With development and progress come the lifestyle diseases that haVE affected many people. One of these lifestyle diseases is obesity—the condition characterized by excessive accumulation and storage of fat in an individual's body (Merriam-Webster, 2010) and in these study, a condition of the adolescents with a BMI of 28. Adolescents are only one of the age groups greatly affected by this phenomenon. Being a minority, they are not understood by the population. This study aimed to know the quality of life of the obese high school students in Manila and their socio demographic status. The study was guided by the theory of Abraham Maslow—in particular, the Hierarchy of Needs model—and the age-old debate of nature vs. nurture. The study employed a quantitative method. Seventy (70) respondents were chosen randomly from the different high schools in Manila to answer the survey-questionnaire. The highs schools from which the respondents were chosen are: St. Joseph's School-Gagalangin, Jose P. Laurel High School, Manila High School, Ramon Magsaysay High School, Manila Science High School, and Araullo High School. The study found out that there is no significant relationship with the age and BMI of the obese high school students, there was only a relationship with the adolescents’ quality of life scores and sex and type of school. Moreover, in using the IWQOL-Kids© by Dr. Ronette Kolotkin, it was revealed that most of the respondents got a moderate to high quality of life scores and domain scores. The only domain that got moderate to poor scores was the domain Body Esteem. It was found out in this study that the relationships of the obese adolescents with his/her peers and family matters in the quality of life he or she has because these are the domain wherein most of them got the highest scores, making the over-all quality of life scores also high.